View down the Cotito River valley
Hey it’s Lizzie, Sam and Schuyler! While we are now at Mama Llena for the course wrap-up, we wanted to share a bit more about our time at Cotito. We arrived on March 1st and soaked up the beauty of the place for the week. Hot springs, waterfalls, Abel’s stories of tomb robbers and of course Ramira’s wonderful cooking are just a few of the many things we enjoyed in Cotito.
Nicolas
Over the course of our stay, each student was tasked with conducting an individually-driven science project. Lizzie did a comparative analysis of the varying water qualities around the Cotito property, Schuyler researched “Matapalo” trees (also known as “strangler figs”), and Sam wrote poetry. Steve really encouraged us to connect with our surroundings in a creative way, and so a lot of our projects were passion projects as well as expeditions into new scientific territory.
Schuyler, Lizzie & Sam helping Austin with his comparative forest project
The Cotito property itself is a coffee farm that harvests coffee, primarily for the hotel. Nicolas, Raquel, and Antonio are a Panamanian family who live and work on the farm, and they were gracious enough to let some of our group shadow them around while they did their daily work.
Cotito was a great place for all of us to bond! We played tons of games together and really enjoyed being off the grid. We will really miss being together and our group dynamic, but we look forward to reconnecting and relaxing in Mama Llena with the rest of the squad!t data
(Note from Steve: This is posted late as we weren’t able to blog from Cotito as we had no way to directly send data.)